


In the Dark Hour

by hhavenh



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Assumption, Cultural Differences, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Misunderstandings, No Spoilers, Romance, Sexual Content, Stand Alone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-07
Updated: 2017-09-07
Packaged: 2018-12-24 21:44:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12021627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hhavenh/pseuds/hhavenh
Summary: This close, a nearness only shared when they spar, and Xander can count every single lash that fringes Kaze's amethyst eyes. He can truly appreciate the darker tint of his lips and the sharp point of his nose. He can feel the supple strength of his bare arms and envision how Kaze might look overwhelmed with touch. With heat and want and pleasure.By the stars, he is asight.Xander retakes Kaze's eyes and cannot help the anticipation that makes race his blood. "Please,” he murmurs, with a voice far deeper than he means, “mistaken or otherwise, you would not leave me like this?”





	In the Dark Hour

* * *

 

It is intuition and an unceasing height of paranoia that draws Xander’s attention more than anything else.

There is no tell in the air. No shift of darkness that gives him halt. Rather it is something far less substantial.

Or perhaps far more.

Instinct crawls up the back of his wrist and whispers caution in his ear. There spawns suspicion. Uncertainty. Hesitation as well, but that is easily overcome by endurance. By fortitude and strength of will.

When Xander uncords the entrance to his tent, double sided and four-cornered in the way of Nohr, it is in expectation. Of what he is unsure, but an adolescence spent within Krakenburg's halls has taught Xander to never be unprepared. A lesson too long in the learning, if he is in the mood for self-recrimination, but one learned nonetheless.

One learned, but also useless, when it is not hostility that waits within his tent.

Strangely enough, it is Kaze.

He is bereft of his tunic, of his sleeves and scarf. His chest is awash in the golden glow of a candle, the entirety of his body a study in lean efficiency. He is exotic in a way never before seen. But maybe only because of the apparent simplicity, or the distinct departure from what Xander has known all his life. Lace does not climb Kaze's throat and leave the hollow of his collar bone exposed. Clasps and risqué embroidery do not draw the eye to the trim cut of his hips or the shadowed definition of his arms, of his shoulders and chest.

He is only himself, and Xander cannot help but stare.

“…My lord,” Kaze greets, in that ambiguous way of his. Usually Xander prides himself in being able to read this particular man’s tone and inflection.

To do so now would be a lie.

“Kaze,” Xander returns, though his throat feels dry. Harsh. He swallows. It doesn’t help. “Good evening.” It hasn't been, but Xander is nearly certain that soon it will be.

He is even more convinced when Kaze steps forward, his head cocked in feline curiosity. "Have I come at a bad time?"

"Not at all," Xander hastily assures. His mouth is still dry, but he can't convince himself to turn away to seek out a pitcher.  "What may I do for you?"

Xander almost doesn't catch the brief pinch of Kaze's brow, distracted as he is by the way shadow clings to the underside of his jaw and the hollow of his naked throat. Intriguing both, but Xander is far more distracted by his answer. "...Whatever you prefer. "

By the dusk, does he mean what the rush of Xander's blood insists he must?

But a moment more, and there is no doubt.

Perhaps there is some answer seen in his face, perhaps Kaze can feel the _heat_ that must be radiating from Xander’s body, for soon he is so much closer.

Xander’s shirt is untucked and his buckle unclasped in the space between one breath and the next. A long-fingered hand presses against the flexing muscle of his stomach, so warm and firm and _sudden_ that he forgets to breathe. Xander takes each of Kaze’s arms in his hands and holds himself off before that questing hand can slide further. He just doesn’t understand, he needs to _know._ "What is this?" he manages, his voice on the very cusp of roughened need.

He's barely been touched, but Xander is already ablaze with the most desired sort of ache.

Kaze stills, brow again pinched. His fingers are a brand against Xander’s flesh. “…You said it would please you to see more of me."

Did he?

"Did I?"

It is almost unsettling, in some far away part of Xander’s attention, that those fathomless eyes set him alight just as much as the touch of his hand. "This morning,” Kaze murmurs, with all the volume of a midnight whisper. “I brought you a message from Lady Sakura, and you-."

"I said I'd like to see more of you," Xander finishes, because that’s true. That’s absolutely right.

But that also has absolutely nothing to with why Kaze has spent the evening waiting bare-chested in his tent.

Unless…unless he thought that Xander meant…

“Kaze,” he breathes, as a hapless smile begins to curve his lips. “I meant tea, or even supper." But Xander would lie, to say that this is not something far more preferred to either. "It seems as though I never see you lest it be by way of duty." He waits for Kaze's lips to quirk in shared humor.

But they don't.

And then Kaze retreats. All of him, his hand, his nearness, even his suddenly wide eyes. They fall from Xander’s own, almost hidden away in the forever wind-swept mess of his bangs.

“I…I assumed, I’m sorry-.” He turns, but Xander tightens his grip of Kaze’s arms and holds him fast.

This close, a nearness only shared when they spar, and Xander can count every single lash that fringes Kaze's amethyst eyes. He can truly appreciate the darker tint of his lips and the sharp point of his nose. He can feel the supple strength of his bare arms and envision how Kaze might look overwhelmed with touch. With heat and want and pleasure.

By the stars, he is a _sight_.

Xander retakes Kaze's eyes and cannot help the anticipation that makes race his blood. "Please,” he murmurs, with a voice far deeper than he means, “mistaken or otherwise, you would not leave me like this?”

A moment, long and still and so very uncertain, and then Kaze licks his lips.

A dragon growls to life in Xander’s chest and demands he _touch._

Oh, and Kaze lets him. He presses into every stroke and pushes his hands up beneath Xander’s shirt, to drag firm fingers up through the curls of Xander’s chest hair. His nails scrape, his palms slide. It is impossible not to feel him in turn, for Xander’s hands not to learn the contour of his waist as his lips make a feast of Kaze’s unmarred throat. It isn’t a conscious thought to move beneath the band of his leggings. To skim past the lip of his smallclothes and take a grip on either side of his ass.

It is not the sound of a man that passes Xander’s throat.

Kaze makes a wordless noise and ruts against the thigh between his own. He clutches so close and presses a thousand kisses against Xander’s throat. Beneath his ear, against his brow, at the corner of his eyes, of his mouth. Kaze’s lips are never far, his hands never still. He must ache no different than Xander, he must want this _just_ _the same._

How long has this been between them?

How many nights has Xander wasted alone, stroking himself to completion when instead he could have been between Kaze’s heady thighs?

Wasted thoughts, when Xander can be between them now.

"Oil," he manages, on the second try. "Did you think to-."

"No need," Kaze whispers against his lips. "I am ready."

The words make him groan, but reality forces Xander to hold himself steady, lest he put Kaze on his knees then and there. He wants he wants he _wants_ , he wants everything this dear man will give, everything he can possibly _take,_ but Xander cannot be concerned with only himself. Not when it is Kaze that so craves his touch. "I would hurt you," he whispers back, but only because something dark and possessive might escape him were Xander to be any louder. “There must be something-.”

“My lord,” Kaze breathes, holding himself so near, almost so near as one man and another could ever hope to be. "Please, I have made ready."

He made _ready._

He came here expecting to be put on his knees. Ready to let Xander take of his flesh, of his body.

Xander forgets himself and immediately reaches enough to thrust a single finger into such exquisitely slick heat.

" _Kaze_ ," he breathes, as a sound of such undeniable satisfaction echoes from the stunning creature against his chest. Xander hasn’t the strength to resist, to do a single thing but press deeper, firmer, again and _again_ , until he has three fingers in Kaze’s ass and can feel him _shiver_.

Kaze’s breath is stuttered. He licks his lips, the brush of his tongue almost unfelt against Xander's throat. And then so quiet, so validating and drowned in desire, "My lord-."

 _"Xander."_ Immediate. Instant and roughed in his own mounting need. It is not a request, but nothing so callous as a command. It-, it is just necessary, it is something that _must be._ "Call me Xander,” he whispers, grit out from between his teeth. An entreaty. Almost a plea _. "_ Let me be nothing but myself, and I will give you exactly what you require."

There is nothing so liberating. Nothing so free, as to be only a man in the midst of this fire and heat.

"Xander," Kaze returns, and then again, rasped and so enchantingly sweet, “Xander, _please-_."

It is shameful, how swiftly Xander puts Kaze against the floor and moves between his knees.

But who could fault him? This man was made to be touched, to be stroked by Xander's hands and to stretch wide on his cock. To be caressed and pet like the wonderful treasure he is, a creature of jewel-bright eyes and flawless skin, every scar and dimple only another augment to his exotic beauty. The way he _feels,_ the sound he makes when Xander drags his leggings down with ungentle hands.

Oh, how he _keens_ when Xander presses against him with something far firmer than a finger. How he ruts back, breaching himself on Xander’s cock as if another second is just too long a wait to bear.

Xander doesn’t deny him. How could he?

Thighs splayed, shoulders low, Kaze is perfection given flesh. His ass bounces with each roll of Xander's hips, his fingers half curl against the rug before they spray back wide. If he makes a sound Xander does not know, everything drowned by the beat of his own heart, by the frantic drum of his racing blood.

This is too much but still not enough.

Xander drags his shirts and jerkin overhead with a hard yank of his collars. His chest is bared, his lungs freed, but still he is a flame. A man of fire, they both are. Sweat makes slick Kaze’s hips and gleams like diamonds against his shoulders in the candlelight. Xander tastes him again. It isn’t in him to resist, to not put his teeth against Kaze’s pale skin and leave every evidence of his touch.

Another sound, a bitten off loveliness that makes Xander snap in faster, and _faster,_ until it is as if his heart races his breath.

He reaches and takes Kaze in hand, just to be sure that he burns the same.

Xander has never known something so glorious as when Kaze finishes right there, face against the floor and knees spread wide. His cock throbs thrice in Xander’s palm, and a single breathy sound passes his bitten lips.

It’s all Xander needs to follow him over that glorious edge.

To emerge from that hazy place of pleasure is as much a battle as has been this wretched day.

When Xander knows himself again, when he can distinguish himself from the roaring satisfaction in his chest and the still burning girth of his loins, he has to keep himself from groaning out Kaze’s name like an overly loquacious poet of old. Xander knows his tongue to be nothing of silver, and instead just sighs into Kaze’s sinfully soft hair. To pull away is another struggle, and Xander almost groans again.

Kaze will have marks in the morning.

On the outside of his thighs and down the pale length of his throat. Against his left shoulder blade and in the notch of his hips, where Xander still holds him firm as the burning intensity of satisfaction slowly banks. There are already marks on either side of his ass, just now noticed. Red blossoms of color that show where Xander’s nails indented as Kaze stretched so _perfectly_ around his cock. There are more, there must be, but they all speak the same language, they all make the same claim.

Possession is rarely a sentiment voiced. More it is shown. It is felt.

It screams in the space between words and lives in the darkness of blemished flesh. 

Kaze makes a noise. A breathy question with no words. He makes another one when Xander pulls from him, a quiet sound of the same tired fulfillment that drips down Xander’s spine as if molasses. They sag there together on the floor, rolled away from the evidence of Kaze’s pleasure.

How undeniably grand it is, to lay here sprawled and spent. To know the relaxation, the nearness, of another as embroiled in this worthless war as himself. To know that nearness, and not wonder if this indulgence would cost him something far more than his time. “I did not expect anything quite so enjoyable this evening,” Xander finally murmurs, incapable of keeping himself from stroking once more down moonlight skin. “I wish I’d thought to retire far sooner.”

He does not need to see Kaze’s face to know this is a sentiment shared.

How can’t it be, with the sounds that passed those lovely lips?

“…It is late,” Kaze says, in a tone of such strange deference. “I will not intrude further.”

"Do," Xander tells him, unnecessary as it is. He’s willing to play along though, and slides a claiming palm across the top of Kaze’s hip. "Stay. Why would you go?"

But Kaze still pulls away. "I have duties yet this night."

"Do you?" Xander laughs, content to rest there on his elbow as Kaze plays at getting dressed. "And what duties might those be?” He almost jokes about Kaze running off to please another lord, but even in the solitude of his own thoughts it seems too flippant. Glib, even. As if in direct disregard of the heat they have only just shared.

Or maybe he just can’t stand the thought of anyone else between Kaze’s flawless thighs.

“Small matters,” Kaze murmurs, tugging his leggings into place. “Do not be concerned.”

Xander wouldn’t, if not for the way Kaze brings out a neat stack of his usual vestment from behind a chest. “Kaze,” he says, the name a different sort of groan as he reluctantly takes his feet. His knees are in immediate protest, abused as they were but moments ago against the floor. “Quit this,” Xander murmurs, moving behind Kaze to again take his waist. He ignores the dark urge within that insists that it is his right. “The sun is gone, will you not warm me in its stead?”

Not his most elegant proposition, but Xander doesn’t often need to rekindle his charm this far into the evening.

But Kaze isn’t charmed. He even pulls away and turns to Xander with his ambiguous eyes. “My lord…I have duties.”

He’s serious.

He really means to leave Xander here like a discarded lambskin after a sordid affair.

When heat climbs Xander’s throat again it is nothing pleasant. It is a struggle not to fist his hands, to not clench his jaw and make obvious the indignity climbing him bone by bloody _bone._ "And knowing so, you still came here?”

Or…or is it only a convenient excuse?

A way to politely remove himself from a lackluster engagement.

“…I didn’t…” Kaze is motionless, unfathomable. So beyond emotion in a way that Xander dearly wishes he could emulate. “I didn’t know you would expect me to remain.”

“Why wouldn’t you?” It is petulance, or perhaps something more like embarrassed shame, that makes Xander’s voice so hard. So callous and sharp. It is one or both that force a question he wants no answer to from his lips, “Was I not _adequate-.”_

“N-no!” Kaze rushes, his brows given enough height that they disappear into the mess of his bangs. His hand even reaches, though Xander is in no mood to reach back. His own fingers feel like claws. His teeth like fangs. “My lord, please, you-, you were fine, _more than fine_ , I-.” Kaze’s face heats, and his eyes no longer meet Xander’s own, “I haven’t-, I’ve never had so-.”

“Spare me,” Xander snarls. He feels so foolish, standing here shamed with his bare chest and wilting prick.

“Th-this is not something said!” Kaze rushes out, and only then does Xander note how heavy the flush is that clings to his cheeks. That and the curl of his hands, the thumb of his left caught under his forefinger. An infrequently seen tell of something that Xander has still yet to determine. “I…if it was not clear, I-, I don’t know how...”

If it was not clear.

If _what_ was not clear?

“…It is not something said,” Xander repeats, and then, when the possible cause of Kaze’s distress dawns in a sudden sweep of incredulity, “You cannot mean what happened between us? That we have laid-.”

“My lord, _please,”_ Kaze begs as if scandalized, his cheeks yet a bloom.

Xander still doesn’t understand, he’s still entirely sure that there’s something else afoot, but he can’t quite stomach Kaze’s deference in the wake of their passion. Or perhaps only their attempt at it. “You know my name.” The scold comes out kinder than he means.

A boon, because Kaze finally lifts his eyes and gifts Xander once more with their fathomless grace. 

“…Xander,” Kaze finally says, the curve of his lips more defined. Almost what could be called a smile. “This-, this is nothing spoken of in Hoshido."

Preposterous. Absolutely and entirely. “…You cannot be serious.”

But it’s so very clear that he is. From his blushing cheeks to the returned aversion of his eyes.

“It is not something said,” Kaze repeats, the words so rote. But despite his blush his bitten lips are quirked, as if maybe he too realizes the madness of this. “After…after it is done, it is done. There is no need to speak of it.”

By the dusk, Xander’s never heard something so dramatic.

Still, he gladly discards his humiliation as one would an ill-fitting jacket. “…Then I suppose I must apologize,” he finally allows, though only in deference to the embarrassed heat yet clinging to Kaze’s lovely skin. Ridiculous as such a practice is, the breeding of one’s homeland is not something so easily pushed aside. No matter the lunacy. “We speak of such openly in Nohr. Perhaps too openly…It was never my intention to cause you discomfort.”

It is a rather disappointing conclusion to a night that had begun with such promise.

“…I did not lie,” Kaze whispers, once more lifting a careful hand to Xander’s chest. His fingers are again brands, so hot and sudden they seem. “You-, I-, I cannot even begin to tell you how-.” He bites his lip again, so inescapably precious in every aspect of his manner.

How did Xander go so long without this exquisite man’s touch?

He lifts a hand to Kaze’s waist and urges him near. “Is that why you won’t stay the night?”

Kaze seems startled again. His chin lifts until Xander can see the entirety of his handsome face. From his pointed nose to the length of his lashes. “Is that too the way of Nohr?” Xander's brows come together, and Kaze elaborates. “For those not wed to stay after, is that an expectation?"

How amazingly strange it must be, to live in a land of such hindered intimacy.

“…It is,” Xander answers, though he doesn’t quite realize the truth of his words until they are spoken. Perhaps he’s never dealt with an evening like this. Forced to nearly beg a lover to remain. In all his years, in all the trysts he’s had within Krakenburg’s many shadows, he has never thought it strange, never expected to open his eyes the next morning and not find his bed still occupied. No matter if he’d have rathered to wake alone.

It…it was just not a thing done, to cast a lover aside so immediately.

“I suppose there is no such compulsion in Hoshido?”

 “…As I said.” Kaze shrugs as he glides away from Xander’s touch. “After it is done, it is done.”

So final. So callous. So…so remarkably cold.

It is disconcerting to consider Kaze cold. Inaccurate, as well.

Xander knows now, when before he could only have guessed. He can’t quite help the insistence to try and know that heat again. "I do wish you would stay."

The way Kaze looks away, a shyness there not often seen, is almost enough to convince Xander that he’d like to.

But ever dutiful, Kaze shakes his head and finishes tying his sleeves. “I yet have tasks this night.”

He is an embodiment of dedication nearly unfathomable, that so easily would Kaze walk away from a night warmed by another's embrace.

"And tomorrow night?" Xander decides, never more daring than when he has this man’s attention. "You will stay?"

It is as if watching the rise of the sun, gloriously golden and as inevitable as the morning tide, when Kaze deigns to truly smile. The bridge of his nose crinkles, and his amethyst eyes come alive in a way that-, that is just so far beyond Xander’s ability to accurately relate. Not that he would care to. Possession claws at his gut and makes heavy the pulse of his blood. Neither is lessened when Kaze steps back close and leans so very near.

“Yes,” he whispers, before taking a final kiss. One so soft and sweetly chaste that Xander’s chest alights in such strangely inexplicable fire. “For you, my lord, I will stay.”

A dragon again comes alive and cries satisfaction behind Xander’s eyes.

“I will hold you to that,” he returns, carefully, as again his teeth feel like fangs.

Kaze’s face heats. Even dressed again, all those lovely marks hidden away, he is still so much a sight. “I hope you do.”


End file.
